Like It Matters

Here’s a situation I found myself in:

• I have 1 ssh user available to me
• I wish to have shell access to this user
• I wish to use this user for multi-user git repositories

Here’s the solution I found: Use an ssh ‘config’ file and gitolite. I followed the instructions from Pro Git to install gitolite. I will repeat them here for convenience. Replace words starting with ‘my_’ with names respective to your setup.

1. Create a key pair with no passphrase.

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa

2. Copy your public key to the remote server. (Note: some OSs have the command ssh-copy-id. Run ‘ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa my_remote_user@my_remote_server‘ to skip the following step).

$ scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub my_remote_user@my_remote_server:~/
$ ssh my_remote_user@my_remote_server
my_remote_user@my_remote_server:~$ cat id_rsa.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys
my_remote_user@my_remote_server:~$ rm id_rsa.pub
my_remote_user@my_remote_server:~$ exit

3. Clone gitolite source and install it. Replace git_admin with the desired gitolite admin user name. The passphrase-prompt asks you for a passphrase to protect your gitolite private key. I left it blank.

$ git clone git://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite
$ cd gitolite/src
$ ./gl-easy-install -q my_remote_user my_remote_server git_admin

The install creates the following files in your home directory:

.ssh/git_admin
.ssh/git_admin.pub

The install creates the following files/folders in my_remote_user‘s home directory:

.cache/
.gitolite/
gitolite-install/
.gitolite.rc
projects.list
repositories/

4. Open my_user’s ssh config file for editing with your favorite text editor.

$ pico ~/.ssh/config

5. Add something like the following, substituting in your respective info, and save.

Host my_gitolite_server
    Hostname my_remote_server
    User my_remote_user
    Port 22
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/git_admin

6. When you wish to use clone/pull/push/etc with your gitolite server, usemy_gitolite_server instead of my_remote_user@my_remote_server.

git clone my_gitolite_server:my_favorite_repo

Note: If you’re on OS X, ssh-agent may save your password for shell access, preventing you from using your git key. Enter ‘killall ssh-agent’ at command line to erase its keys before connecting to your gitolite server. Don’t worry, your key files will by fine.

UPDATE (12 Aug 2011): Some versions of openssh will die with the message ‘PTY allocation request failed on channel 0′. Until I figure out how to fix this properly, my remedy is to append the following to ~/.profile:

GIT_SSH='ssh -T'